The Shattered Mask s-3

by Richard Lee Byers

  She struggled in vain to compose herself, and then a skeletal creature in a ragged shroud swooped out of the darkness, its fleshless fingers poised to snatch and claw.

  At that moment, it seemed the most terrifying threat she'd ever encountered, and, sobbing, she whipped out her broadsword and hacked at it. From the corner of her eye, she saw Thamalon pivot to confront a skull-headed assailant of his own.

  Panic robbed her sword arm of much of its accustomed skill, and her first blow missed. The revenant whirled around her, scratching and gibbering, exuding a foul stink of decay, and when she turned to keep the dead thing in front of her, her own motion seemed to cause the landscape to shift even more violently, albeit undefinably, than before. A surge of vertigo made her reel.

  The phantom picked that moment to pounce at her, and despite her dizziness, she did her best to cut at it. Her stroke swept into the undead creature's black, rotting cerements, and it vanished. The blow also spun Shamur off her feet.

  As she peered frantically about, she found that her disorientation was all but complete. Spatial relationships made little sense. From moment to moment, she had difficulty determining which objects were adjacent to one another, which were near and which were far. Though she could have sworn she had blundered about in a complete circle, she never so much as glimpsed Thamalon or his attacker. She could hear him grunt and his boots creak, but couldn't figure out from which direction the sounds were originating.

  Another spectral assailant floated toward her. She clambered to her feet and staggered to meet it. The revenant seemed to disappear. Then she discerned that the stone lammasu, which a moment ago had appeared to be on her right, now loomed on her left. Assuming she could trust that perception, in the course of just a few steps, she'd managed to spin herself completely around. Which in turn meant that the phantom was even now rushing at her back.

  She whirled, cutting blindly. The broadsword struck the phantom's yellow skull and swept it into nonexis-tence.

  Shamur noticed she was panting. She struggled to control her breathing and thus her overwhelming terror. She had to figure a way out of this trap now, this second, before yet another dead thing hurtled at her.

  It didn't make sense that she was so profoundly afraid, gasping, shaking, her heart pounding. She'd encountered apparent distortions of space and time before, and though the revenants were foul and unsettling, she'd faced far more formidable adversaries in her time. She suspected that she and Thamalon had triggered some sort of magical field of disorientation, dizziness, and terror. It was possible that the phantoms weren't even real, just one illusory aspect of a trap intended to immobilize its victims until one of the patrolling warriors happened by.

  She clung to that notion for a heartbeat or two, until another keening wraith dived at her, at that point logic gave way to raw, animal fear. By the time that, slashing wildly, she dispatched the thing, it was hard even to remember what she'd just been thinking, let alone put any faith in her conclusions.

  How could the ghostly attackers be phantasmal when they looked and sounded so real? How could the warping of the landscape be a mere deception when she could see the world dancing and contorting around her? And even if it was all in her mind, that didn't mean there was any way to escape it. She was going to die here, the revenants would claw her apart, her heart would burst from fear, or-

  At that moment, when sanity was slipping from her grasp, Thamalon reappeared in her tear-blurred field of vision. He hadn't had a chance or else in his distress hadn't remembered to remove his buckler from his belt, and she desperately, reflexively snatched at his unweaponed hand.

  Their fingers met. He turned his head and saw her, and, plainly feeling the same frantic need for contact as herself, he yanked her to his side.

  Clinging to Thamalon anchored her somehow. For the moment at least, terror loosened its grip. Suspecting this was the last lucid interval she was likely to get, she tried to reason her way out of the trap.

  She couldn't trust her eyes, her ears, her nose, or her perception of direction, yet surely there was some aspect of reality the enchantment hadn't muddled. Despite her awkward, flailing swordplay, the revenants had never actually touched her, and perhaps that meant they couldn't. That would imply that the magically induced confusion didn't extend to her sense of touch.

  She and Thamalon had been approaching the mansion from downwind. Perhaps if she kept the frigid, howling gusts in her face, and didn't permit any other cues to mislead her, she could lead her husband out of the area tainted by the spell.

  Unfortunately, that would mean closing her eyes, and what if she was wrong, and the phantoms truly existed? She'd have no way to defend herself as they ripped her apart!

  With a snarl, she thrust that crippling thought away. If she was wrong, she and Thamalon were dead anyway. "Walk with me," she said, squinting her eyes shut. "Don't let go of my hand."

  Her lack of vision didn't end the fear, the nausea, or the sense that the world was writhing and jerking around her, nor did it keep her from hearing the wails or smelling the fetor of the revenants. She struggled to ignore all such distractions and focus only on the frigid caress of the wind. Thamalon jerked on her hand as he lurched about swinging his long sword at the apparitions.

  Then he stopped and murmured, "Valkur's shield, you did it. You got us out."

  Shamur opened her eyes to find the world returned to normal. She looked back toward the marble lammasu. No wraiths were streaking in pursuit of mortal prey.

  She drew a long breath and let it out slowly, to calm her racing heart and purge the dregs of the terror from her system. "The Talendar must give interesting garden parties."

  Thamalon grinned. "I imagine they only set the snare at times when no one is supposed to be in this part of the grounds."

  "You think? And here I thought they prided themselves on their sense of humor. Are you ready to press on?"

  "When you are." They sheathed their swords and sneaked toward the house.

  Like Argent Hall, the Talendar mansion had once been a stark donjon, but as their wealth increased and their taste for luxury and ostentation grew apace, the occupants had modified and extended the building to a far greater extent than the Karns had ever imagined. Old High Hall had become a sprawling, rococo confection graced with a profusion of friezes, cornices, arches, and similar ornamentation. It was a truism in Selgaunt that the Talendar never tired of stripping away the old decorations and replacing them with something more fashionable or even avant-garde, and scaffolding currently extended along a portion of the west wing. The framework looked as if would provide an easy means of ascent to an upper-story window, but given the family's reputation for wariness, Shamur suspected that appearance was deceptive. A mantrap waited up there somewhere, or at least the two spearmen walking the alures on the roof were watching the scaffold with special care. Crouching at the edge of the open space surrounding the keep, she looked for a safer means of access.

  After a few moments, she noticed a sort of secondary portal projecting from the body of the house, bordered by pilasters and capped with a block of carved stone more than half again as tall as the recessed door itself. Just above that coping were round stained-glass windows, that, if her memory of various dances and parties wasn't playing her false, ran along the wall of a clerestory overlooking one of several spacious halls.

  She pointed to the entry, and Thamalon nodded. They waited until neither of the guards were looking in their direction, then darted up to the portal and crouched in its shadow.

  Shamur quickly climbed to the top of the capstone, then, feeling vulnerable and exposed to the view of the sentries above her, examined the windows. She hoped they'd been designed to open. Otherwise she'd have to extract one from its frame, a time-consuming process that would greatly increase the likelihood of someone catching sight of her.

  But fortunately, it wasn't going to come to that. A moment's scrutiny revealed the simplest of latches. She worked a thin strip of steel between th
e stile and post, popped the fastener, cracked open the window, and peeked inside at a shadowy gallery illuminated only by a single oil lamp burning at the far end. No one was in sight.

  Shamur tied off a thin rope and dropped it to enable Thamalon to ascend to her as quickly and quietly as possible. When he joined her, she freed the line, coiled it, started through the window, and froze.

  "What's wrong?" Thamalon whispered.

  "Nightingale floor," she replied, "built to squeak when anyone treads on it. I am rusty. I nearly failed to notice in time."

  He peered past her at the gloomy interior of the building. "It's a marvel you noticed at all."

  She shrugged the compliment away. "You can generally tell by the kind of wood, and the pattern in which the planks were laid."

  "Does this mean we can't go in this way?"

  "Luckily, no, but you must step precisely where I do."

  "Very well. Lead on."

  She did, taking care to trust her weight only to those spots where she reckoned the floorboards made contact with the joists beneath. She and Thamalon reached the arched entrance without either making a sound.

  After that, they crept through the keep, listening for the voices and footfalls of others, ducking for cover and avoiding being seen whenever possible, strolling casually and pretending they belonged in the mansion when observation was unavoidable. Had they waited another hour or so to break in, there would have been fewer people roaming about, but Errendar Spillwine had taught Shamur that shortly before midnight was an advantageous time to enter a wealthy house. Many of the occupants had either retired already or were preoccupied with preparing to do so, and unfamiliar persons walking the corridors were less likely to excite alarm would be the case later on.

  Finally, lurking in the doorway to a playroom full of balls, dolls, toy men-at-arms, and hobbyhorses, the Uskevren spied what they had been searching for. A brown-haired young man with a wispy mustache and the characteristic slim frame and wry, intelligent face of the Talendar, some bastard son of a female servant, perhaps, judging from the fact that he wore an ill-fitting hand-me-down doublet cut in last year's style, ambled rather unsteadily down the corridor.

  The youth was alone. Indeed, as far as Shamur could tell, no one else was even in the immediate vicinity. So she lunged from the doorway, seized the lad, poised her dagger at his throat, and hauled him into the playroom. Thamalon shut the door behind them.

  As she'd expected, the youth smelled of wine, but she saw no confusion in his wide, bloodshot eyes. Perhaps fear had sobered him up.

  "What do you want?" he croaked.

  "Tell me about the plan to assassinate the Uskevren," she said.

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  Shamur believed him. It made sense that few members of the household would be privy to a criminal conspiracy. "Then tell me where Ossian Talendar is."

  "Gone."

  She increased the pressure of the keen edge against his neck. "Don't lie, or I swear to Mask, I'll kill you."

  "It's true! He left a couple hours ago and took some of the warriors and Lord Talendar's mage along with him! Some other wizard in a moon mask went along, too, somebody I never saw before."

  Shamur and Thamalon exchanged glances.

  "Where did they go?" Thamalon asked.

  "I don't know," said the boy. "They didn't tell anybody. All I know is that the guards didn't wear their uniforms, or take any arms or armor they couldn't hide under weathercloaks."

  Shamur frowned. Did Ossian and the masked wizard mean to attack Stormweather Towers itself? No, surely not, they must realize that even with Jander and Master Selwick dead, such an effort had little chance of success. Did they then have hopes of catching one or more of the Uskevren children away from home? That seemed equally unlikely. Tamlin, Thazienne, and Talbot knew they were being hunted, and thus ought to have sense enough to stay in after dark.

  Perhaps the enemy meant to attack and burn one of Thamalon's warehouses or merchantmen at anchor, as in the days when the vendetta between the rival Houses was at its fiercest.

  "Nuldrevyn must know what's afoot," said Thamalon. "Where is he?"

  "I don't know that, either," said the youth.

  "Nonsense," Thamalon rapped. "The lackeys and retainers in a great house always have some notion of where their master is and what he's up to. The lad's playing games with us, milady. Carve him up a bit to prove we're in earnest."

  "No!" yelped the youth, squirming futilely in Shamur's grasp. "I'm telling the truth!"

  "Then explain," Thamalon said.

  "No one's seen Lord Talendar since this afternoon. Master Ossian fetched him away from a conference with a quarryman, then returned later to tell the fellow that something had come up, and his lordship couldn't give him any more time. We've all been kind of wondering where the old man's gotten to."

  "You're sure he didn't depart with Ossian and the others?" Shamur asked.

  "Yes," said the boy. "Somebody would have noticed." ?

  "And no one saw the masked spellcaster arrive?" she persisted. "Suddenly he was simply here inside the castle?"

  "That's right."

  Shamur nodded. "Is there a part of the mansion where people don't generally go? Where Lord Talendar and Master Ossian could confer with a third party without anybody else knowing it? Where, perhaps, a guest could even take up residence without the rank-and-file members of the household getting wind of it?"

  "I suppose. I mean, there's a section nobody's used for at least a generation."

  Shamur looked at Thamalon. "Perhaps well find Nul-drevyn there, or failing that, some clue to Master Moon's identity or his current intentions. I admit it's by no means a certainty, but I don't have any other ideas."

  "Nor do I," Thamalon said. "Tell us how to get there, boy."

  The youth obeyed, whereupon the intruders gagged him with a long gown commandeered from a marionette, trussed him to a chair with a pair of jump ropes, and left him in the playroom.

  The Uskevren reached the disused portion of the house without incident. Once they entered its precincts, and no longer had to worry about appearing suspicious, they drew their swords, and Thamalon readied his buckler. Ere long, Shamur grinned with excitement, for she could tell from the broken cobwebs and the scuff marks on the dusty floor that someone else had recently walked these frigid, gloomy corridors.

  Then she glimpsed dim light spilling from one of the doorways ahead. She and Thamalon crept up to it and peered beyond the threshold. On the other side was the parlor of a suite, luxurious and stylish once with clear, faceted crystals decorating many of the articles inside. Now it was musty and dark. The only illumination shone from the stub of a single white candle in the latten holder on the marble mantelpiece. It looked as if someone might have initially have lit two or three, but the others had already burned out. That wan, wavering glow barely sufficed to reveal the enormous, coiled shape in the corner, and the motionless human figure behind it that might be either a prisoner or a corpse.

  Shamur gave Thamalon an inquiring look. He flicked his long sword in the suggestion of a cut, indicating they should attack the snake, and she nodded in agreement. Though she had no way of knowing precisely what was transpiring here, it seemed likely that Master Moon had conjured up the reptile to guard or kill the man on the floor. Therefore, the Uskevren needed to kill the beast so they could interrogate the fellow if he was still alive, or search his body and the apartment if he wasn't.

  Hoping to take the serpent by surprise, the Uskevren stepped forward. Meanwhile, Shamur wondered if their efforts to cat-foot into striking distance were unnecessary, for a learned comrade of hers had once told her that snakes were deaf. Then the huge, steel-gray creature demonstrated that, however deficient its hearing, it had some way of sensing enemies at its back, for it swiveled its wedge-shaped head and regarded them with malevolent coppery eyes.

  The Uskevren charged, and the serpent struck, its head streaking forward like a bolt from a crossbow
. Thamalon caught the attack on his buckler, the metal rang, and the force of the impact sent him reeling backward.

  Shamur drove her point at the snake's flank. The broadsword glanced off the creature's scales as if they were fine plate armor. She had succeeded in attracting the serpent's attention, however. It twisted around, gave a screeching hiss, and struck. Lacking a shield, and dubious of her ability to parry such an attack with her blade, she sprang backward out of range.

  Its long body uncoiling, the serpent slithered after her, striking repeatedly. She kept on dodging, riposting when possible, always failing to penetrate the scales, and did her inadequate best to keep the beast from backing her up against a wall. Every time she started to dart to the side, the reptile whipped its head around on that long, sinuous neck and cut her off.

  The snake had almost succeeded in trapping her when Thamalon, his buckler pocked where the creature's fang had struck it and corroded where venom had spattered from the point of impact, cut at its spine from behind. He too failed to penetrate the scales, but he distracted the serpent, and Shamur lunged out into the center of the room.

  The snake struck at Thamalon, who sidestepped, brushed the attack away with the buckler, and attempted to counter. Before he could complete the action, the serpent, employing a new tactic, lashed its tail around at his ankles and tumbled him off his feet.

  The reptile's enormous gray head plunged at the stunned and supine man. Shamur frantically leaped forward and swung her broadsword with all her strength. The edge failed to gash the creature's snout, but it did bash it aside and so prevent its long, curved ivory fangs from piercing Thamalon's body.

  She had assumed the snake would now turn its attention to her, but it persisted in trying to strike at the human on the floor, and so she hacked at it again. This time, her stroke landed but failed to deflect the enormous head. Her eyes widened in horror, and then Thamalon, who had evidently recovered his wits, rolled out from under the plummeting fangs.